June 2, 2022
Frozen Pizza
By Mikie Baker
The Bandera Prophet
It seems the country has split into Urban and Rural. If you’re an Urban, you have no clue. If you are Rural, you see the gap and it’s wide. This might send you Urban people running, but nobody delivers a hot, freshly baked pizza to someone who lives an hour away from the closest Dominos.
I grew up in Big D where there was a Subway on every corner, the sound of leaf blowers every Saturday and lovely, seasonal color. In Rural terms, seasonal color means a salad bar for deer.
When I moved to the country, I had no idea what Rural life was like. First off, it’s dang dark out here so you need an extra big flashlight. The next thing I discovered was it’s almost impossible to dig a hole unless you’ve got a pickaxe. (Not kidding.) Thirdly, to my horrors, I plugged in my computer and found my internet was Dial Up. “Hey, You’ve Got Mail!” But it will take 30 minutes to download that mail while you listen to some weird electronic sound over and over until you’re sure the Martians have landed and you’re their next victim.
But the biggest horror to me was to talk on my iPhone. I had to go outside on the porch, lean against the third column, raise my left knee, tip my head ever so slightly just to get one bar. One bar. Screaming was part of all my conversations back then.
Luckily technology has caught up with the Rurals and today we not only have three bars on the iPhone in most places (except for in the hills), we have fast internet and even broadband. Of course, you still have to dig a hole with a pickaxe. Oh, and deer eat everything, including cactus, and spend much of their time laughing at those of us who try and plant flowers and a vegetable garden.
We make do. We buy frozen pizza, make a run an hour away to buy groceries a couple of times a month, and cage up every precious plant so the deer can’t have another salad bar. But there’s one thing that hasn’t changed and it’s the bane of our existence. We all have Post Office boxes.
Doesn’t sound like a problem, now does it? Hah! Have you ever tried to order something from Amazon, Coldwater Creek, or Adam & Eve? Not even the king of distribution, Amazon, will take a P.O. Box. You people all have fancy street addresses. We have addresses too, but only local repair men know where we are and how to open a gate.
The secret to our semi-success and getting anything we want with a push of a button, is to trick Amazon and all the others. We go ahead and give them our address, but we put a little slash after it with our P.O. Box number. We just leave out the P.O. part. But even this trick won’t get you a hot, freshly baked pizza in 30 minutes.
There is a great thing about Rural life. When either UPS or FedEx actually does show up at our back gate with something too large for the Post Office to handle, it’s like the Wells Fargo Wagon is a coming. The dogs bark, the cats hide, and we run outside singing to see what wonderful thing is in a giant box. At least the UPS guy has become friends with the dogs. Those FedEx guys are still skittish.
Yep, you Urban people are wimps with your every wish and demand delivered to your door within an hour. Out here, we’re tough because we still eat frozen pizza.
I grew up in Big D where there was a Subway on every corner, the sound of leaf blowers every Saturday and lovely, seasonal color. In Rural terms, seasonal color means a salad bar for deer.
When I moved to the country, I had no idea what Rural life was like. First off, it’s dang dark out here so you need an extra big flashlight. The next thing I discovered was it’s almost impossible to dig a hole unless you’ve got a pickaxe. (Not kidding.) Thirdly, to my horrors, I plugged in my computer and found my internet was Dial Up. “Hey, You’ve Got Mail!” But it will take 30 minutes to download that mail while you listen to some weird electronic sound over and over until you’re sure the Martians have landed and you’re their next victim.
But the biggest horror to me was to talk on my iPhone. I had to go outside on the porch, lean against the third column, raise my left knee, tip my head ever so slightly just to get one bar. One bar. Screaming was part of all my conversations back then.
Luckily technology has caught up with the Rurals and today we not only have three bars on the iPhone in most places (except for in the hills), we have fast internet and even broadband. Of course, you still have to dig a hole with a pickaxe. Oh, and deer eat everything, including cactus, and spend much of their time laughing at those of us who try and plant flowers and a vegetable garden.
We make do. We buy frozen pizza, make a run an hour away to buy groceries a couple of times a month, and cage up every precious plant so the deer can’t have another salad bar. But there’s one thing that hasn’t changed and it’s the bane of our existence. We all have Post Office boxes.
Doesn’t sound like a problem, now does it? Hah! Have you ever tried to order something from Amazon, Coldwater Creek, or Adam & Eve? Not even the king of distribution, Amazon, will take a P.O. Box. You people all have fancy street addresses. We have addresses too, but only local repair men know where we are and how to open a gate.
The secret to our semi-success and getting anything we want with a push of a button, is to trick Amazon and all the others. We go ahead and give them our address, but we put a little slash after it with our P.O. Box number. We just leave out the P.O. part. But even this trick won’t get you a hot, freshly baked pizza in 30 minutes.
There is a great thing about Rural life. When either UPS or FedEx actually does show up at our back gate with something too large for the Post Office to handle, it’s like the Wells Fargo Wagon is a coming. The dogs bark, the cats hide, and we run outside singing to see what wonderful thing is in a giant box. At least the UPS guy has become friends with the dogs. Those FedEx guys are still skittish.
Yep, you Urban people are wimps with your every wish and demand delivered to your door within an hour. Out here, we’re tough because we still eat frozen pizza.